Despite changing gender norms, few fathers decide to take parental leave after the birth of a child, and when they do, their leave spells are substantially shorter compared to mothers. This study examines how paternal leave-taking is affected by two key features of leave policies: flexibility in...

Women experience significant reductions in labor market income following the birth of children, while their male partners experience no such income drops. This "relative child penalty" has been well documented and accounts for a significant amount of the gender income gap. In this paper we do...

This study examines the effect of two recent parental leave reforms in Austria that allow parents to choose leave schemes with varying duration. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that the introduction of more flexible scheme choices led mothers to take, on average, 1-2 months less...

This study seeks to determine the effect on the gender employment gap and women's employment of the extension of maternity leave from four months to six months in Viet Nam's 2012 Labor Code. To identify this effect, labour market outcomes of groups of women and men are compared. We use the...

This paper studies the effects of a father quota in the parental leave period on households' labor market and fertility decisions. Identification is based on the 2007 reform of the Spanish family benefit system, which extended the sixteen weeks of paid parental leave by two additional weeks...

This paper analyzes the wage development of mothers interrupting their careers, in comparison to the wages of men who do not face a parental interruption. We estimate OLS regression models for different subcategories defined by age and point in time. We use data from the German Socioeconomic...

We find that the introduction of two weeks of paid paternity leave in Spain in 2007 led to delays in subsequent fertility. Following a regression discontinuity design and using rich administrative data, we show that parents who were (just) entitled to the new paternity leave took longer to have...

Using data from social security records and an event study approach, we estimate the child penalty in Spain, looking at disparities for women and men across different labor outcomes following the birth of the first child. Our findings show that, the year after the first child is born, mothers’...